More than 50% of girls fail to enroll in school; those that do are likely to drop out by the age of 12 and 53% of girls in the age group of 5-9 yrs are illiterate.

Female Infanticide Cases Reported In North Gujarat

Two cases of female foeticide have come to attention within a span of five days in north Gujarat, police said Thursday.

A female foetus was recovered by the police from the roof of a commercial complex in the busy Sanjay Chowk area in Palanpur, the district headquarters of Banaskantha district.

The foetus was badly mutilated by stray dogs, the police said, adding a case was registered and investigations were on.

The police in Prantij town of Sabarkantha district last Saturday recovered a newly born dead female foetus from Bhoba canal, 9 km from the town.

‘It was one-day old foetus lying in Bhoba canal,’ said police officials.

According to Becharsinh Harisinh, the sarpanch of Bodiya who spotted the foetus lying in the canal and informed the police: ‘Deep rooted social evil still continues to haunt our society. I feel a lot needs to be done. We are doing our best to find out the culprits responsible for this killing of female child.’

The cases have come up at a time when a four-member skating expedition team is touring the state with a campaign slogan ‘Save the girl child’ and was just a few kilometres away from Deesa town.

Gujarat, with 878 girls per thousand boys, has the sixth lowest child sex ratio in the country.

Source: Ahmedabad, Feb 19 (IANS), posted by sulekha news